[Audio Empire]

On Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:22:17 -0700, wrote
(in article ):

Each time this topic has another life cycle I go again to a test to settle
it.

Having its origin in this group a digital copy was made from an lp. A
blind test was done to see if which was playing at any given time could be
determined beyond guessing alone. It could not. Whatever was on the lp
was captured in the digital to the degree source could not be determined.

Yes, that mirrors both my experience and my expectations as well. Now, If
it's so easy to do this right, and if it was so easy for me to take my Dolby
'A', 1/2 track, 15 ips analog master tapes and copy them to DAT and finally
to Red Book CD and have the DATs and the CDs made from the DATs sound EXACTLY
like the analog masters, then why would it be so difficult for record
companies with unlimited resources to take their vault masters and make a
decent CD from them? But it certainly seems to be that difficult when they
can't even make a CD sound as good as the LP, never mind the master tapes!

So when we see an lp and a digital recording compared in the present case
we must first conclude based on the previous test, that something in the
content was altered in going from lp to digital.

I suspect that the original vault masters weren't used, but instead, the CDs
and other digital copies of the analog originals was made from a
multigenerational copy - perhaps in many cases even an LP cutting master full
of cutting moves not appropriate to making digital copies. It must be
something along those lines because the process couldn't be simpler: Thread
up the master tape, rewind it, set the level into digital recorder so as not
to overmodulate, hit record, on the digital machine, then hit play on the
analog master. What could be easier?

The tests are different
of course. In the previous test it made no matter which was preferred
because if no difference could be spotted it was a mute question. If in
the current test differences so large as to evoke preferences are heard our
conclusion about change in content is also warrented.

In the first test "better" was the same. In the current test it was
different but has next to no relevance on the question of "better" because
we must conclude the content is different. The "better" is the original
content not the medium.

Of course in my anecdote, we have no idea which of the copies sounded the
most like the masters since we don't have the masters (originals) to compare
to. I can only hope that the LP is a closer approximation to the master than
are either the HiRez copies, the Red Book CD, or the SACD, because they
definitely sound less like "real music" to all concerned.